Champagne is typically stored under high pressure in bottles with tightly inserted corks. In removing the corks, the pressure inside the bottle is often so great that the cork, upon being removed, is propelled into the air and, despite care, occasionally causes personal injury such as injury to a person's eye.
The most common method used by people to remove champagne corks is by pressing their thumbs upward against the corks. This can cause personal discomfort and there is little control in keeping the cork from being projected into the air.
Mechanical devices have been provided for removing wine bottle corks. One type of device drills a helical hook into the wine bottle cork. Such devices are inadequate for champagne bottle corks because champagne corks are often made of plastic and are difficult to drill into. In addition, drilling a hole into the plastic cork will make it unreusable, and may allow champagne to spray out of the drilled hole before the cork has been removed.
One device for removing champagne bottle corks is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,406,182 to Howard J. Antone. A review of the Antone patent indicates that the device is somewhat complex. It uses three shafts and three frames. Manufacturing and assembling these shafts and frames is more expensive and time consuming than would manufacturing and assembling a device involving fewer parts. In addition, the combination of shafts and frames is generally unappealing aesthetically. Moreover, the Antone device, because of the metal plates which grip the champagne bottle, is highly likely to chip the bottle when the cork is extracted. The Antone device also does not protect the user from any spray that exits the bottle as the cork is being removed.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a device for controllably pulling a champagne bottle cork.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a device for controllably re-inserting the champagne bottle cork into the bottle after opening.
It is yet another object of the invention that the device use a minimum number of parts and thus be relatively inexpensive to manufacture and assemble.